(Note: Draft excerpt, un-edited, un-corrected)
Chapter 43
Tristan Freeburn
The brood mother’s lair
Tristan sidestepped Homrin as she struggled to coax her torch back to life, blocking what she could of the sudden wind gust with her back. The chamber dimmed; long shadows cast by the scattered rows of eggs. The Captain raised his torch over his head. Dark blots played tricks at the periphery of Tristan’s vision, resolving into a horde of broodlings within his imagination.
He pivoted, rifle raised, and watched in horror as Richards was hurled into a patch of darkness by a black, manic mass of spindly limbs.
“Richards!” Tristan shouted, pointing his rifle in that direction.
The Captain swung his torch around to reveal a massive broodling pinning Richards to the excavated floor. Clothing ripped and skin tore. The creature was too close to their friend to risk firing a deadeye.
Billie sprung into action but before she could draw a throwing dagger, her arms were pulled behind her back by tiny limbs. She twisted and fell, franticly tossing spiders off of her. A cluster of dark shapes launched themselves at the Captain. He waved his torch to warm them off, but when they struck his light pitched and went tumbling into a pool of liquid. It died the instant it struck the fetid surface.
Homrin fought to keep the light alive, but her torch flickered and went out.
In the dark, Tristan could hear his companions struggling. Billie groaned and Richards let off a string of insults. The Captain was quiet, but Homrin was not.
“We need light,” Homrin growled in frustration. “How many are there? I can’t fight what I can’t see!”
Tristan gripped his deadeye and twisted around. There were no sources of light, and in his vision, a purple blot hung where torch light had been.
Clicking, skittering noises met with damp soil. The massive insects were closing in, and in such numbers, they were not so quiet. Something wet dripped down from the ceiling into his shirt. He shivered and slapped at his neck. He wished for a moment they were in a cave full of saccialo, nothing more to do than to fire a deadeye and scare them away. But they would have to handle this the hard way, with blunt force and sharp ends. If only they could see. If only two of his companions weren’t already down.
A half dozen breaths at most, and a hungry flood would crash on them.
A thought occurred to Tristan. Perhaps he could relight one of the torches just as the Captain had done. The change in wind had stopped. It couldn’t be hard. It would only take a spark.
He raised his rifle, drew on his talisman’s power, and pulled the trigger. Just as he had when loading his rifle, he slowed the time around him for a moment. The hotflint of his deadeye struck powder and the room flashed white for an instant, hundreds of thumb size eyes arrayed in an arc shining back. He rotated in the moment and pivoted his head to locate Homrin’s missing torch. The light faded, and he dove for the handle.
The base of the torch was damp, sticky, but the rag was not, thank Haller. Tristan focused his thoughts on a spark and attempted to light anew. Nothing happened. He pushed again, a feeling like hitting his brain against a brick wall.
All the power, but none of the spark.
“Gods damn it,” Billie whimpered. Tristan felt his heart rise into his throat. She was hurt.
He tried again, imagining tinder as it caught flame, just like the resin lamp he kept in his room. He could feel greater levels of astral power flooding his body, yet still, nothing happened.
“Get off me, get off me!” Richards demanded. “You eight eyed, ass eating bastards! Aghh! Fuckers.”
A flicker went off beside Tristan. Homrin’s face appeared, a cluster of burning lucifer’s in her meaty right hand. She relit the torch and snatched it from Tristan, raising once more to her full height. The room filled with an uneven awareness, patches of light flashing in and out of existence.
The first thing that drew Tristan’s attention was the pile of broodlings swarming Richards’s flailing body. Tristan could just make out the duelist pistol in his hand, barrel pointed at the belly of the largest of the attackers.
“Pull the trigger,” Homrin begged. “For Own’s sake, pull the damned trigger.”
Richards would not.
Billie bolted out of the dark, her cloak covered in a sheen of blue blood. She crossed her blades and dug them into both flanks of the largest broodling, then lifted it over her head and hurled in into the dark center of the room. The creature shrieked as it tumbled to the floor, spewing entrails and gore as it went.
Fangs came down on Richards legs and he rolled to the side. The barrel of his pistol found a new target, but yet he still held back firing.
“Fire!” Homrin shouted, holding the torch high while fending off fresh broodlings with an axe.
“It’s a pain in the ass to…” Richards squirmed beneath the press of arachnids.
“What was that?”
Richards drew on his talisman and launched a knee into one of them, sending it shooting towards the ceiling. The broodling struck stone and exploded into a shower of organs and blood. He reached across his middle and removed a dagger, stabbing another in the thorax, its skin crunching as he drove the silver blade deep.
With a boot heel, Billie kicked the last off of Richards like a ballovault ball. She helped him stand, and he gave her a nod.
“I said,” Richards continued, pistol in hand. “It’s too much of a pain in the ass to reload this pistol. I’ll wait for a better target.”
Billie shook her head. “Better than the one who’s trying to eat you?”
“Where’s the Captain?” Homrin asked. She waved her torch around. A broodling began crawling up her leg and Richards skewered it through the head with his rapier.
Something loud began to grind on their right flank. They turned in unison to see a shadow big as a house descending to the muck covered floor.
Tristan took a knee and began reloading. Billie slashed at the air as the flood of broodlings crashed upon them. There were so many they were crawling over one another like crabs, pining for fresh meat. The creatures had closed off the exit, and though most of them were small, and likely not dangerous to talisman bearers, there were hundreds of them. There was no way out but through it.
“She’s revealed herself,” the Captain shouted from out of sight. They took a collective sigh. He was alive. “I’ll draw her attention. Surround her.”
“What about her children?” Richards asked, took a fencer’s stance, and slashed out with his rapier. “They seem less than disinclined to stop coming.”
“I have an idea,” Tristan blurted out. “Smoke, they didn’t like the smoke. Why not set off powder charges?”
“We won’t be able to breathe,” Homrin commented.
Billie reached in a pocket and tossed Tristan and Richards a strip of fabric. “Breathe through this.” She ran up behind Homrin and helped her fasten her own.
“Do it, Freeburn,” the Captain said. A light appeared on the other side of the chamber and Tristan could see where their leader had gone. “Light the powder.”
“Yes, sir.” He dug in his ammo pouch and removed a handful of charges.
Richards, Homrin, and Billie held off the broodlings as Tristan set up, ripping paper charges with his teeth and pouring the powder in a line across the top of a greenish egg sack. The cordon of safety they could move within shrunk at the broodling’s advance. Within moments there was little more than two paces worth of space for them to work within.
The ground shook as the brood mother fixed her attention to the Captain. Something new burned in his hand, not a torch, not even a branch, but an arm. A human arm broken off at the elbow.
At the center of the room, a leg tall as five men came out of the dark, and the left flank of the great demonia planatae appeared, her flesh studded with razor sharp ebony hairs. She took several jerky steps and pursued the Captain.
“Here, take this,” Homrin tossed Tristan a powder horn. “It’ll be faster.”
“Good idea.”
He pulled the cork out with his teeth and emptied its contents. By the time he finished, he’d drawn a thin line which spiraled in on itself atop one of the eggs, its length reaching several feet.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, and struck a lucifer.
The powder fizzled and flared. Smoke filled the chamber. As the gas rapidly diffused, the broodlings edged away from the source. Within a few moments they had all but fled. The bitter tang of sulfur wasn’t worth bearing for a quick meal.
On the opposite side of the chamber, the Captain took off at a run. The Brood Mother responded in kind, lashing out with her front legs. He dove beneath a leg swipe and rolled behind a cluster of eggs. She leaned forward and brought two appendages down with violent intent, crushing her would-be children and caring not at all. The Captain sprang between her outstretched legs and swung his long sword across her thorax. The blade skittered down the length of her flesh, kicking up sparks but not penetrating. Her head swung around, dozens of obsidian eyes refocusing on her nimble prey.
The Captain stopped and twisted, narrowly avoiding another swipe from one of her shorter legs. He struck hard and drew the cut back, attempting to saw through the hardened flesh. She cried and stomped the ground, causing him to lose balance for an instant.
“Surround her,” the Captain shouted. “Billie, Homrin, up front. Freeburn, Richards, rear.”
The Falcera trainees sprang into action, their movements no longer hindered by the hundreds of children the great beast had birthed. Tristan weaved between the eggs, hopping over fetid pools and sticky webs. The liquified sacks of what had once been deer and other animals, this fact only apparent from the antlers and limbs jutting like gnarled twigs from the white silk bulges, dangled from the ceiling in zigzagging rows. Tristan dashed between them, narrowly avoiding being stuck in the ribs with a spiraled horn. He vowed not to end up as they had.
Homrin jabbed her torch into the soft top of an egg and threw herself at one of the Brood Mother’s legs, both axes drawn. One of her dallowvein axe heads came down and cracked the armored skin below the lowest joint. She followed up with a second blow and the armor splintered. A shard of black spider flesh dug into her leg, but she didn’t stop. Her assault continued.
“Freeburn!” Richards said. “See the spot on the abdomen?”
Tristan refocused his attention. He did. It was bright red, like the embers of a dying pit at sunset, emitting a dim glow rather than absorbing it.
“Soft spot?”
“One way to find out. On three.”
They raised their rifles.
“One—two—three!”
Their deadeyes crackled and even more smoke filled the foggy chamber. The Brood Mother squealed, her cry echoed by the hundreds of broodlings too fearful to enter the chamber, a shrill, wobbling note of agony.
She twisted around to face Tristan and Richards, lowered her body, and began crawling towards them. A flash of light came from the other side of the cave. Homrin took hold of one of the Brood Mother’s legs and pulled. She paused, tossed Homrin aside, distracted for an instant. The Captain plunged his long sword into a chink in her armor, then took off running.
Billie stood stunned and watched, daggers in her hands, fingers frozen.
“Reload. Reload!” Richards said. “We only have a moment. Reload.”
The Brood Mother took off after the Captain again. Instead of running full tilt she paused and made a gagging noise. Translucent spines as long as lampposts appeared in her mouth.
Captain Jackson Morelock tossed his torch aside, dropped his weapon, and drew the wine stained cloak around him. The spines in the Brood Mother’s mouth took flight, striking the Captain’s cloak one after the next with the force of a spike tipped hammer blow.
“Captain!” Billie ducked around the Brood Mother’s legs and drew a curved blade from her cloak. She drove it into one of the creature’s eyes and pulled down with all her weight. The Brood Mother responded by slamming her head down and pounding Billie into the floor. She did it again, and again—thrashing, hammering, pummeling the ground, before she quit.
Billie lay on the floor unmoving, one leg twisted at an impossible angle. For an instant all Tristan could think about was last night, laying with bare skin against one another, sharing their heat. The sweet scent of her breath, the shivers her nails sent down his spine.
Her longing eyes were closed.
“Billie,” Tristan mumbled, and raised his rifle. “Kill the bitch! Kill the gods damned bitch!”
“Haller with us,” Richards growled, and they fired again.
Their shots tore into the red spot along the abdomen but did little enough damage to slow her down. The Brood Mother was the size of a farmhouse. Even if they fired ever lead ball they had, would it be enough to stop her?
Homrin shouted a battle cry and ripped at the Brood Mother’s side. She twisted again, and this time, sent Homrin skidding back into a row of eggs which burst as she landed.
She did not get back up.
“This is bad,” Richards said. “Bloody shit-cakes. What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Tristan said. Billie wasn’t moving. Homrin wasn’t moving. The Brood Mother wasn’t severely injured, but she sure was pissed as the hells. They had come into her house and she would not let them leave until their insides had been turned to jelly.
The Captain rose to his feet and tossed his cloak back, silver threads glittering in the dying torchlight. For a miracle, the spines had not pierced his cloak.
“Keep fighting,” he said. “Keep firing. I’ll hold her attention.”
“It’s not working!” Tristan shouted, his tone on the edge of hysteria. “She’s too damn big. We don’t have the firepower.”
“I’m not going down like this, not today. Make it work.”
Tristan and Richards fired again, and again, and again. Smoke was now so thick they could hardly see the Captain as he was being pursued around the chamber in circles, kiting the beast to avoid an agonized death. He burst into a patch of open air, took a step, and caught his foot on a pile of dead broodlings. The Brood Mother took the advantage and pinned the Captain against the far wall.
“Do something!” he shouted. “Now!”
The Brood Mother leaned into the Captain’s face and her pedipalps went to work, relieving him of his weapons. One of the appendages lifted the Captain’s talisman on its chain. Her face leaned in, and she inspected it with her dozens of eyes, curious.
None of their weapons had been effective in the least. Where was this creature’s weak spot? Tristan’s heart shouted that it was the red flesh of its abdomen, but how could he inflict enough damage there? His rifle wasn’t enough. His broadsword wasn’t enough. There was too much flesh and too little firepower.
“Wait,” he mumbled, and set his rifle on the ground.
Above the Brood Mother’s abdomen, a stone hung from the root woven dirt ceiling, half its mass exposed to open air. A pointed tip was aimed at the floor, willing to apply a great deal of pressure over a small surface area if given the chance.
Tristan closed his eyes and reached for the Vigale, to his left one hundred fifty miles. He let the awareness fill his mind, and the power of his talisman fill his body. He’d done this before, though perhaps not on this scale, but it had worked. He gathered all his strength and imagined a hammer crashing into the hanging stone.
“Just like the street. Just like the street,” he said. His body went hot. His hands shook. His knees wobbled. Something traveled towards along the Vigale’s ley line.
A blast of concussive force hurled from Tristan’s outstretched palm. Dust fell from the ceiling and the stone wobbled in place, then the dirt gave way. The substantial lump of granite and quartz fell with all the force of a landslide, its pointed end pressing into the Brood Mother’s abdomen.
She cried as the weight dug through armored flesh into her body, crushing legs and organs as if they were jelly filled confections. It took only a moment before she stopped flailing, the occasional twitch the only thing left for anyone to witness. The broodlings shrieked and scattered, their voices becoming distant in the labyrinth of tunnels.
Hunger found its way into Tristan’s belly. He looked to Billie’s motionless body and felt his stomach twist. His knees vibrated. A trickle of blood dripped from his nose onto his upper lip.
“I—em—” He took a step and stumbled. “Are—"
“Freeburn, you okay?” Richards asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. “How did you?”
Before Richards could catch him, Tristan’s legs gave way.
The floor of the cave rushed up.
Darkness met him head on.